When I started reading BLACKTOP WASTELAND in August, on recommendation from a friend, I don't think I realized quite how much S.A. Cosby would reveal about the contradictions and complexities of rural life in the South (U.S), especially for a Black man. In his review of the novel for NPR, Gabino Iglesias wrote, "The most surprising thing about S.A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland, which is marketed as a crime novel, is that crime is the least important element in the book." It wasn't the prescribed genre that drew me to his work, it was the fact that I knew he was going to give a voice to a Southern Black experience that I have been hungry for ever since he-who-shall-not-be-named took the highest office in the nation. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable work in the genre and is a well-earned contribution to the American canon of Southern literature.
Listen in as S.A. and I discuss race relations in the U.S., Southern cooking, what it's like to become the peer of our heroes, and how to tell a damn good story.
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BLACKTOP WASTELAND w/S.A. Cosby